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Macalester Journal of Philosophy

Volume 19Issue 1 Spring 2010

Article 10

10-7-2010

Examining Potentiality in the Philosophy of Giorgio Agamben

Elizabeth Balskus Macalester College

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158

Examining Potentiality in the Philosophy of Giorgio

Agamben

Elizabeth Balskus

I. Introduction

“There is something that all people, whether they admit it or not, know in their heart of hearts: that things could have

been different, that that would have been possible. Theycould live not only without hunger and also probably

without fear, but also freely. And yet, at the same time—and all over the world—the social apparatus has become so

hardened that what lies before them as a means of possible fulfillment presents itself as radically impossible” –Theodor

Adorno

Following the publication of his book Homo Sacer:

Sovereign Power and Bare Life in 1995,1

Giorgio Agambenquickly became one of the most widely discussed thinkers in

contemporary European philosophy. Although Agamben’sacademic career has spanned over three decades, the success

and relevance of the political critique found in Homo Sacer

has led most analyses of Agamben to be centered around thesignificance of this book. However, attempts to viewAgamben’s philosophy through the lens of the political

theory expounded in Homo Sacer seem vastly misguided.Agamben himself has proclaimed: “I could state the subject

of my work as an attempt to understand the meaning of the

1

Agamben, Giorgio. 1995. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press.



159

verb ‘can’ [ potere]. What do I mean when I say: ‘I can, Icannot’?”

2Agamben later explains that this questioning of

the verb potere leads him repeatedly to examine the

categories of potentiality and actuality. One can see

throughout almost all of Agamben’s writings this theme of

potentiality and a curiosity into the role potentiality plays inall aspects of our existence. Indeed, one of the most central

and obscure chapters in Homo Sacer , “Potentiality andLaw,” focuses on the role potentiality plays in the power

structures of our systems of sovereignty. It would seem,therefore, that before we can begin to truly understand

Agamben’s political or moral philosophy we should firstattempt to grasp this potentiality that lies at the foundation of

Agamben’s thought.Attempting to define potentiality within Agamben’s

philosophy, however, is an exceptionally difficult task.Leland de la Durantaye writes: “The first challenge to

understanding Agamben’s idea of potentiality stems from itscentrality”.

3Because the term potentiality is used in so

much of Agamben’s work in various different ways, it isoften easier to pinpoint its influence in a particular work,

rather than elaborate what precisely this potentiality is.While de la Durantaye has argued (in my opinion, correctly)

that potentiality plays a large role in all of the major ideas

found in Agamben’s philosophy

4

, I believe that there arethree concepts within Agamben’s thought that can lead to aricher, more precise idea of this potentiality:

inoperativeness, decreation, and profanity. In this paper, I

2Agamben, Giorgio. 1999. Potentialities: Collected Essays in

Philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 177.3 De la Durantaye, Leland. 2009. Giorgio Agamben: A Critical

Introduction. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 4.4Ibid.



160

plan to examine Agamben’s potentiality, beginning withAgamben’s use of Aristotelian potentiality, through the roleit plays in inoperativeness, decreation and profanity,

showing that potentiality in Agamben’s philosophy goes far

beyond the possibility to be or not be, but also serves as the

foundation for political, creative and moral action.

II. Aristotle and Thought as Potentiality Between the idea

And the reality Between the motion

And the act Falls the shadow

‐ T.S.Eliot

No analysis of Giorgio Agamben’s potentiality can

begin without a discussion of the potentiality found inAristotle’s De Anima and Metaphysics. Agamben begins

almost every section of his writing on potentiality withAristotle and consistently states that his own views on

potentiality have their origins in Aristotle. Both Aristotle

and Agamben maintain that anything potential is capable of not existing in actuality, and that “what is potential can both be and not be, for the same is potential both to be and not to be”.

5This statement initially seems to be a simple

establishment of the contingency of beings and events.

However, the relationship between the potential not to be

5

Aristotle. 1986. Metaphysics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress, 1050 b 10.



161

and reality can be seen in various ways. Aristotle writes: “Athing is said to be potential if, when the act of which it issaid to be potential is realized, there will be nothing

impotential”.6

Agamben uses this definition of potentiality,

which has often been interpreted as Aristotle merely stating

that if something is not impossible then it can be called potential, as a foundation for a much deeper meaning of

potentiality. Agamben interprets Aristotle as saying, “if a potentiality to not-be originally belongs to all potentiality,

then there is truly potentiality only where the potentiality tonot-be does not lag behind actuality but passes fully into it

as such”.7

Agamben finds within Aristotle a “potentialitythat conserves itself and saves itself in actuality”.

8This

concept of a potentiality that maintains itself even after anevent is actualized is difficult to grasp. What exactly can

this potentiality consist of if an event has already occurred?The potential to not be is easiest understood in an

example that both Aristotle and Agamben utilize: possessinga faculty. Aristotle specifically writes about the faculty of

sight as an ability that always contains within it its own potential to not be. If we were constantly in a state of being

where we could see, sight itself would not be a faculty whichwe possess; it would merely be a condition of our existence.

However, we do not simply experience sight itself. We also

have the ability to experience darkness. And it is becausewe can experience darkness and are aware of this sensationas the “not-being” of seeing that we can say that we possess

the faculty of sight. This potential of sight to not bemaintains itself throughout our experiences, as we are

6Ibid., 1047 a 24-26.

7

Potentialities, 183.8Ibid., 184.



162

constantly aware of our potential for darkness and canachieve this darkness at any point (for example, by shuttingour eyes). At the very core of our ability to see is our

potential for darkness, and it is indeed this potential for

darkness that allows us to see the light. De la Durantaye

aptly states that Aristotle’s emphasis on the darker side of potentiality, the “not-to” that accompanies every ability we

possess, is significant to Agamben’s concept of potentiality because, “it denotes the possibility for a thing not to pass

into existence and thereby remain at the level of mere—or ‘pure’—potentiality”.

9But what can this pure potentiality

possibly entail?The idea of a pure potentiality is made clearer in

Agamben’s discussion of the intellect. Aristotle states thatnous, or the intellect, “has no other nature than that of being

potential, and before thinking it is absolutely nothing”.10

This statement leads Agamben to establish the intellect as

the perfect example of pure potentiality, a potentiality“which in itself is nothing, [but] allows for the act of

intelligence to take place”.11

But how are we to think of this potential of the intellect? What does it mean to examine

thought’s potential to not think? Aristotle devotes a largesection of the Metaphysics to addressing the complexity of

the potentiality of the intellect. The problem is fairly

simple: Aristotle wishes to maintain that thought is thehighest of all human faculties. It becomes difficult to makethis claim, however, if one simply views the intellect either

as thinking about objects or not thinking at all. De la

9 Critical Introduction, 5.

10Aristotle. 1986. De Anima. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 429 a 21-22.11 Potentialities, 245.



163

Durantaye explains: “If thought were merely the sum of things of which it has thought, not only would it be inferior to its object, but it would also leave unexplained thought’s

most singular feature: its ability to reflect upon itself”.12

It is

in thought’s ability to think itself that Aristotle is able to

maintain the supremacy of the intellect: “thought thinksitself, if it is the most excellent of all things, and thought is

the thinking of thinking”.13

It is in thinking itself, indetaching itself from any outside object, that the intellect is

truly pure potentiality.Although Aristotle has provided Agamben with an

example of pure potentiality, the relationship of this potentiality to actuality still remains ambiguous until

Agamben explains in full the extreme significance of thought thinking itself. Agamben writes: “The potential

intellect is not a thing. It is nothing other than the intentio through which a thing is understood; it is not a known object

but simply a pure knowability and receptivity.14 This “pureknowability and receptivity” of the intellect is, in fact, the

pure potentiality of the intellect. When viewed as the abilityto know or reflect, pure potentiality of the intellect becomes

extremely important. This potentiality can exist apart fromthe actualization of any thought of a particular object

because it is, in fact, this potentiality itself that allows for an

object to even be thought. Therefore, the potentiality of theintellect not only allows for thought to maintain a supreme position ontologically, it is also the foundation of thought in

general. Furthermore, “in the potentiality that thinks itself,action and passion coincide and the writing tablet writes by


13

Metaphysics, 1074 b 15-35.14 Potentialities, 251.



164

itself or, rather, writes its own passivity”.15

This idea of “action and passion coincid[ing]” and impotentiality givingitself up to a realized action is a theme frequented in

Agamben’s writing. For example, Agamben believes that

perfect writing does not come from the desire to write any

thing in particular, but “from an impotence that turns back on itself and in this way comes to itself as a pure act”.

16

This impotence that denies itself for the sake of actuality is quite abstract and difficult to understand.

However, there are clear examples of the type of passion at play in Agamben’s philosophy, most notably, in his

discussion of Glenn Gould in The Coming Community.Agamben writes: “even though every pianist necessarily has

the potential to play and the potential to not-play, GlennGould is, however, the only one who can not not-play, and,

directing his potentiality not only to the act but to his ownimpotence, he plays, so to speak, with his potential to not-

play”.17 This comment could refer to the notoriousreputation Glenn Gould held as one of the most technically

gifted pianists in the world, one of the most renowned performers of the 20

thcentury, who did not, however,

practice the piano regularly and, if he did practice, often didso without the use of an actual piano by miming the motions

and playing the songs in his mind. While every concert

pianist has the skill to exercise his ability to play the piano,Glenn Gould, in exercising his ability to not play the piano by “playing” without his instrument, maintained his

impotentiality as a pianist. This impotentiality was turned

15 Agamben, Giorgio. 1993. The Coming Community. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 36.16

Ibid.17Ibid., 34.



165

back towards itself the minute Gould’s fingers touched a piano at a performance, when the skill and techniqueacquired by not playing the piano allowed Gould to play

Bach better than any pianist in the world. It is this act of

impotentiality turning back on itself that is often lauded in

Agamben’s writings as the highest action possible, and it isimportant to keep this concept of impotentiality giving itself

to itself as the highest act in mind when examiningAgamben’s views on ethics and politics.

III. The Inoperative

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take

part” – Mario Savio

Leland de la Durantaye correctly states that, “no

single term in Agamben’s writing is so easy tomisunderstand as inoperativeness”.

18When Agamben

writes in his book The Coming Community thatinoperativeness should be “the paradigm for the coming

politics”19

, the reader’s initial reaction is most likely

confusion. While in English, the word inoperative hasnegative connotations of being useless or non-functional, theway in which Agamben uses the term is anything but

negative. Agamben is led to the topic of inoperativenessthrough examining the question of the purpose of mankind.

Agreeing with many contemporary philosophers that, “there

18

Critical Introduction, 18.19 Coming Community, 93.



166

is no essence, no historical or spiritual vocation, no biological destiny that humans must enact or realize”

20

Agamben establishes in a section of The Coming Community

entitled “Ethics” that, “there is in effect something that

humans are and have to be… It is the simple fact of one’s

own existence as possibility or potentiality”.21

For Agamben, therefore, the potential nature of human existence

is the foundation of all moral and political actions.22

Buthow can human potentiality translate into moral activity?

And how is this potentiality related to inoperativeness? The potentiality to act and its relation to the inoperative becomes

clear when examining two examples Agamben frequents inhis writings: Bartleby the scrivener, and the 1989 protests at

Tiananmen Square.Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby the

Scrivener” details the life of Bartleby,23

a scrivener whodecides to stop writing without any expressed reason other

than his constant refrain: “I prefer not to.” While Bartleby’sdecision to cease writing (and performing most tasks of

everyday life) eventually leads to his incarceration anddeath, Agamben points to Bartleby as a hopeful figure of

pure potentiality, who “exceeds will (his own and that of

20 Coming Community, 43.

21Ibid.

22It is important to note: “That ethics and politics should not be treated

as separate and distinct disciplines is one of the guiding ideas in

Agamben’s philosophy” (CI 13). Therefore, in this paper I will often use

the terms ethical and political interchangeably due to the belief I share

with Agamben that the ideal political theory is simply people living

together ethically.

23

Melville, Herman. 2004. Great Short Works of Herman Melville. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.



167

others) at every point” and is truly able “neither to posit nor to negate”.

24When asked to write, Bartleby, although he is

fully capable of writing, simply replies that he would prefer

not to. By becoming a scrivener who does not write,

Bartleby preserves his potentiality in its purest form.

Bartleby’s stance also directly relates to the inoperative because Bartleby, in neither affirming nor negating the

requests of his employer when he asks Bartleby to write, haseffectively removed himself from the power structures at

play. At a very basic understanding, for Agamben, “to be‘inoperative’, it would seem, would be to refuse to be an

operative part of the state’s machinery”.25

However, theexample of Bartleby shows a more dynamic view of the

inoperative that reaches beyond political action.“Inoperativeness… represents something not exhausted but

inexhaustible—because it does not pass from the possible tothe actual”.

26The reason that Bartleby is so disturbing to his

employer (who is the narrator of the short story) is that, inremoving himself from the constraints of reason and, indeed,

the constraints of society as a whole, he is the paradigm of the inoperative, of “the other side of potentiality: the

possibility that a thing might not come to pass”.27

And because Bartleby never offers a reason for his refusal to

work and never actually denies the requests made of him,

the authorities at hand are completely bewildered as to howto deal with the scrivener.Bartleby is not the only example of a figure of the

inoperative utilized by Agamben. Agamben often cites the

24 Potentialities, 255, 257.


26

Ibid., 19.27Ibid.



168

demonstrations at Tiananmen Square as an example of political activism similar to that he envisions for the coming politics. Agamben notes: “What was most striking about the

demonstrations of the Chinese May was the relative absence

of determinate contents in their demands”.28

The

demonstrators at Tiananmen Square presented themselves as“something that could not and did not want to be

represented, but that presented itself nonetheless as acommunity and as a common life”.

29It is this coming

together of people without any presupposition of belongingto a group united by a common identity that the Chinese

government found so dangerous. If the protestors haddemanded any particular goals, the government could have

found a way to defend itself and deny them, but the group of protestors at Tiananmen Square were simply removing

themselves from the “machinery” of the Chinesegovernment, declaring themselves inoperative until their

situation could become bearable. Successful political actionin the future, therefore, would be to embrace one’s

potentiality and declare oneself as inoperative within thesovereign structures of one’s society.

IV. Decreation

“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.” – Miles

Davis

Potentiality in any context can easily be seen as a

creative force. In the individual’s ability to act or not act,create or destroy, there is a level of creative potential within

28Agamben, Giorgio. 2000. Means Without End: Notes on Politics.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 88.29Ibid.



169

every person. “For [Agamben],” de la Durantaye points out,“ potentiality is indeed to be understood in the context of creation, but seen from a strange side—one that he calls

decreation”.30

The word decreation is not a term commonly

used and therefore requires closer examination. Agamben

once defined decreation as a “threshold between doing andnot-doing”, a limit that is reached in the creative process

where the artist “no longer creates but decreates”.31

De laDurantaye is quick to assert that this ambiguous notion of

decreation should be viewed neither as an “undoing of creation” or a “deconstruction”.

32How, then, are we to

conceive of this strange idea of decreation?A greater understanding of decreation can be found

in a section of Agamben’s essay, “Bartleby, or OnContingency” called “The Experiment, or On Decreation.”

Agamben begins by recounting Leibniz’s conception of contingency and potentiality. Leibniz states in his essay, On

Freedom, that he was “brought back from this precipice [of fatalism] by a consideration of those possibles which neither

do exist, nor will exist, nor have existed”.33

When Leibnizconsidered the problem of free will and moral responsibility,

he originally came to the conclusion that, if God createdeverything and had foreknowledge of all that he created,

then everything that has existed, exists and will exist must

exist necessarily. If every action I perform must necessarilyoccur, then none of my actions could have been otherwise.And if it was completely impossible for me to have done

otherwise, blaming me for my actions by sending me to Hell


31Ibid.

32

Ibid.33 On Freedom, 106.



170

for eternity seems, at the very least, unjust. At the verymoment the entire universe seemed devoid of anycontingency, Leibniz remembered that there are literally an

infinite number of events that could occur or actions that

could be taken in a person’s life that are never realized in

actuality but nevertheless exist as possibilities. Thisconsideration led Leibniz to the realization that everything

that exists in the actual universe (with the exception of thelaws logic and geometry) could have been otherwise. And it

is due to this realization that Leibniz conceived of the principle of sufficient reason, which states that everything

that occurs happens for a reason. From the principle of sufficient reason, Leibniz comes to the conclusion that the

universe in which we live is the best possible universe, because God, containing perfect reason, had to have created

this universe because it was better than all of the other possible alternatives. Leibniz’s conception of the

contingency of the universe is best articulated in the final pages of Leibniz’s Theodicy, which he describes a chamber

containing all of the possible worlds that could have existedinstead of the actual world. The potential worlds exist in

what Leibniz describes as “an order succession of worlds,which shall contain each and every one the case that is in

question, and shall vary its circumstances and its

consequences”

34

which God sometimes examines, admiringhis decision to create the world as it is. These potentialworlds will never be actualized, but the principle of

sufficient reason necessitates the eternal existence of these potentialities in God’s understanding. The worlds continue

to exist in God’s understanding, because if they were to

34 Theodicy, 371.



171

disappear, there would be nothing to compare the actualworld to—it would simply exist.

These necessarily existing possible worlds are the

reason why Agamben draws upon Leibniz when discussing

pure potentiality and the idea of decreation. In fact, one can

easily see in the figure of Leibniz’s God the same potentiality of Bartleby the scrivener—this ability to

maintain the potential for an event to happen and not happenat the same time. Leibniz’s God can look at the world as it

is in actuality and also the potential for other worlds, therebyforever maintaining the contingency of the universe, as, for

God, everything could eternally happen or not happen. Thisis the reason that God returns to the “ordered succession of

worlds”—in his ability to view all of the possible worlds, heis also, in a way, negating the actual act of creation. All

possibilities still exist within his understanding, and willcontinue to exist for all eternity.

However, Agamben does find fault with Leibniz’sconception of contingency and God asserting his freedom in

revisiting the moment prior to creation, because in returningto the moment of decision, before the actual became

actualized, God has to “close his own ears to the incessantlamentation…from everything that could have been

otherwise but had to be sacrificed for the present world to be

as it is”.

35

It is at this point when Agamben’s take on potentiality differs from that of Leibniz, and this is whereBartleby again becomes useful in our understanding of

Agamben. In never explaining himself or actually stating“yes” or “no” to any of his employer’s demands, Bartleby

“calls into question this…supremacy of the will over

35Ibid.



172

potentiality”.36

And as the will, for Leibniz, is necessarilydetermined by reason, Bartleby also calls into question thesupremacy of reason and asserts his potentiality as a man

without will or reason for his actions. Through his phrase “I

would prefer not to,” Bartleby challenges the principle of

sufficient reason. If the laws of reason do not apply, thenthere is no legitimate justification for why this world exists

and the infinite number of potential worlds were never actualized. This is why Agamben refers to Bartleby as a

messiah who has arrived to “save what was not”.37

Becausethe laws of reason do not apply to him, Bartleby asserts the

right of those possibilities that have never and will never exist to be actualized.

The value of Bartleby as a messiah for all of the possibilities that are never actualized can easily be called

into question. If God, as Leibniz argues, creates this world because it is the best, then what is the use of invoking these

potential events that were not chosen because they wereinferior? It is this inferiority of the possible worlds that

Agamben wishes to challenge. While Leibniz can argue thatGod must have rationally chosen the best of all possible

worlds, Agamben is clearly using Bartleby to call intoquestion the supremacy of rationality as a justification for

creation. Bartleby asserts that, while this world may be the

most rational, that does not necessarily make it the best .Rationality, which for so long has been almost synonymouswith morality within the Western philosophical tradition,

particularly in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, may, infact, be as arbitrary of a gauge for the merit of an action as

anything else. By championing the cause of events that have

36

Potentialities, 254.37Ibid., 270.



173

never and will never exist, Bartleby calls into question on afundamental level why things exist as they do, why theworld was not and is not otherwise.

Within the framework of Leibniz’s cosmology,

Agamben defines decreation as, “a second creation in which

God summons all his potential not to be, creating on the basis of a point of indifference between potentiality and

impotentiality”.38

In examining this decreation, therefore,we can see that “potentiality truly understood is not only all

that came to pass but also all that might have come to passand did not”.

39In every person’s life, there is at least one

moment when she asks the simple question: why? Why didI go to Macalester College instead of University of Chicago?

Why am I studying philosophy and not music? A largeamount of our thoughts and energy are devoted to

considerations of options we did not choose and actions wedid not take. We often find ourselves wondering how we

ended up in a particular situation and what would havehappened if we had chosen a different path. Once our

decisions have been made, however, we tend to look at theevents leading up to them as necessary: I had to go to

Macalester because University of Chicago wanted me to borrow too much money in student loans; I had to study

philosophy because I found that studying music made

performing and listening to music less pleasurable. I have tocurrently be a student because if I do not get a collegedegree, my odds of finding a fulfilling career are slim. This

after-the-fact necessity we apply to events is what Agambentakes such umbrage with. What we all know and yet

constantly try to deny is that we could have acted differently

38

Ibid.39 Critical Introduction, 23.



174

and the current situation does not have to be as it is now. Indecreation, contingency is returned to all events, causing usto remember that, along with the few potentialities that are

actualized, there are an infinite number of potentialities that

will never be and, yet, will continue to shape and influence

our lives.

V. Profanity

“In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances,desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied

even to prayer” – Mark Twain

In his book Profanations, Agamben attributes

Trebatius with the quote: “In the strict sense, profane is theterm for something that was once sacred or religious and is

returned to the use and property of men”.40 In looking at thedistinction between the profane, which can be utilized by

everyone, and the sacred, which traditionally belongs to thesphere of the divine and cannot be touched by humanity,

Agamben sees great potential for appropriation of the sacredinto the profane. One way of reclaiming the sacred for the

profane that Agamben believes has been severely neglected

in contemporary life is the act of playing. “Play not onlyderives from the sphere of the sacred but also in some waysrepresents its overturning”.

41In taking the rituals involved

with the sacred and using them for playful purposes,“play…drops the myth and preserves the rite”.

42By

40Agamben, Giorgio. 2007. Profanations. Boston: Zone Books, 73.

41

Ibid., 75.42Ibid.



175

maintaining the structures of power but imbuing them withnew meaning, such as the use of religious rituals in thechildren’s song and dance “Ring around the Rosy”, the act

of play is a powerful tool. In fact, Agamben states that, “to

return to play its purely profane vocation is a political

task”.43

This discussion of profanity and sacredness may

initially seem out of place when discussing modern politics.Though the categories of the sacred and the profane may at

first seem outdated, Agamben clarifies that, although wemay no longer refer to it as the sacred, there is a “religious

sphere that assails every thing, every place, every humanactivity in order to divide it from itself”.

1This sphere is the

sphere of consumption. The sacred realm of capitalism is,according to Agamben, consumption, and capitalism in its

most pure, extreme form is concerned with makingexperience unusable or unprofanable by separating our

actions from ourselves and presenting them back to us as aspectacle, to be observed and not used. A good example of

this attempt to alienate ourselves from ourselves is pornography: the human form is appropriated, filmed, and

then presented to us as something that can be watched butnever experienced. Agamben calls this phenomenon

“museification.” “Everything today can become a Museum,

because this term simply designates the exhibition of animpossibility of using, of dwelling, of experiencing”.2

It isof extreme importance, therefore, that future politics “wrest

from the apparatuses [of power]—from all apparatuses—the possibility of use that they have captured”.

3The reclaiming

43Ibid., 77.

1Ibid., 81.

2

Ibid., 84.3

Ibid., 92.



176

of the possibility of use is, in fact, “the political task of thecoming generation”.

4

We can see, therefore, that potentiality lies at the

very heart of this concept of the profane. In examining the

current structures of power and the rituals of our time, we

have the ability to find within them the possibility for newuse. Agamben uses the example of feces to illustrate this

point. While, in everyday society, feces are clearly off limits and have only one purpose (that is, to be expelled and

then removed) Agamben notes that babies, almostinstinctually, like to play with feces, to explore their

different uses, until society intervenes and they areconditioned not to. While Agamben does not advocate the

widespread movement to promote creative use of feces, his point in invoking such an extreme example is clear: there is

the possibility for new use of the objects that surround us.We simply have to recognize these objects’ potential for a

different purpose than the one they have traditionally held.This potential for new use is the only way to combat

capitalism’s attempt to make experience unusable. To returnto the example of pornography, Agamben notes that while

pornography has alienated our own bodily form andsexuality from ourselves, there is potential to negate this

effect by engaging with the figures at hand. He cites the

example of a pornographic star who, instead of simulatingthe pleasure associated with the sexual acts in which she isengaged, simply looks, as though bored, at the camera and,

in a sense, watches the viewer watching her.5

In this act of looking at the camera, the fantasy world of the pornographic

is shattered; you are no longer watching a torrid affair, but

4

Ibid.5 Ibid., 94.



177

rather, are distinctly aware of the unreality of the situation being enacted on screen. While this development in pornography has not yet been explored in its fullest capacity,

Agamben believes that the potential is there to reclaim the

body’s sexuality and reengage with our own experience.

And indeed, this potential for profanity extends far beyondthe realm of pornography. We must simply be willing to

look at our world through the eyes of an infant and allowourselves to glimpse the possibility for new use in

everything around us.

VI. Conclusion

“The absolute desperate state of affairs in the society inwhich I live fills me with hope”

- Giorgio Agamben

In a chapter of his book The Coming Community

entitled “The Irreparable” Giorgio Agamben describes theworld after the final, biblical Judgment Day as, “just as it is,

irreparably, but precisely this will be its novelty”.6

Consistent throughout Agamben’s political writings is theidea that today’s society, in all of its injustice and atrocity,contains within it the means to transform itself into a more

just, desirable world. This idea that from the depths of despair we can grab the tools to transform ourselves is not

novel to Agamben—Marx’s quote from The Communist Manifesto, “The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled




179

This hope for change in the face of darkness explainswhy Agamben, despite the fact that his analysis of thecurrent political situation is dire (some have even said

apocalyptic), is often surprised when he is characterized as

being pessimistic. Yes, we live in an era with the extreme

potential for catastrophe. But, indeed, this potential for despair is always also the potential for hope—this is the

beauty of potentiality. What Agamben hopes to accomplishwith the potentialization of society is the reexamination of

what we believe is truly possible and impossible. In viewingthe world and its events as truly contingent, it becomes clear

that we cannot and should not wait for the messiah, somefuture event that will liberate us, or a divine revelation,

because, after all, “the life that begins on earth after the lastday is simply human life”.

11

Bibliography

Agamben, Giorgio. 1999. Potentialities: Collected Essays

in Philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Agamben, Giorgio. 1993. The Coming Community.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Agamben, Giorgio. 2007. Profanations. Boston: Zone

Books.




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Agamben, Giorgio. 2000. Means Without End: Notes on Politics. Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress

De la Durantaye, Leland. 2009. Giorgio Agamben: A

Critical Introduction. Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress.

Aristotle. 1986. Metaphysics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press.

Aristotle. 1986. De Anima. Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press.

Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm. 1998. Theodicy: Essays on the

Goodness of God and the Freedom of Man.Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company.

Kafka, Franz. 1996. The Metamorphosis and Other Short

Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Agamben, Giorgio. 1995. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Melville, Herman. 2004. Great Short Works of Herman

Melville. New York: Harper Perennial ModernClassics.

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